Tiger Tales


Stories of '57's lives

 

All of us have tales to tell. We are interested in yours. E-mail me:  turhantirana@banking.state.ny.us

 

 

PAW Follow up
Images of Cliff and Peggy Roltsch and Dave and Tanya Cameron on their jouney on the Erie Canal.





Big Brother - be one like Don
 
One of several benefits to DON LAWS of being a Big Brother is “learning all the in-things to do.”   Don’s current Little Brother, Luke, is 16, two years older than Don’s oldest grandchild.  This gives Don a head-start on how his grandchildren will see the world and what, perhaps, they’d like from him.  Luke has instructed Don in rap music (“understanding why the words are being said and what they mean”) and the technology and vocabulary of skate boarding and snow boarding.   Spiderman, too, is part of Don’s new world, thanks to Luke.  “Among the lessons in Spiderman movies is that if you have any special talent, you should use it for the betterment of mankind,” Don said. His early adult years were focused on raising his own three children and, otherwise, his career which took him up the corporate ladder to general counsel of U.S. Steel.  “Now it’s payback time,” he said.    What Don has done with Luke includes introducing him to the Bronx Zoo, the Natural History Museum in NYC, the Liberty Science Center in NJ, the State Museum in Trenton, all to further Luke’s incipient interest in science; helping him study for a driver’s license; designing and planting a flower and vegetable garden; helping him study to improve his chances to attend college; volunteering for Habitat for Humanity and beach clean-up; attending ball games; playing catch; playing tennis; advising him on coping with siblings and, overall, acting as a mentor as well as friend in lieu of a missing father. 
Most children in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Program are missing at least one parent.  Where Don lives, in suburban New Jersey, the program’s needs exploded after 9/11 when over 200 children in the area lost a parent.  Should you be interested, chapters are listed in most telephone directories, or call Don (732-974-5681).
 

 Luke & Big Brother Don 
 
 
 
 
 
Peter Pruzan, Alive and Well in Copenhagen
 

                                     
                                     Peter Pruzan and Bart Reitz in parking lot of the Karen Blixen home outside Copenhagen
 
  
 
Just before leaving on a Baltic cruise I received an e-mail note from Peter asking about access to this web site from Denmark. It is really no trouble at all and I gave Peter instructions with a personal question. I knew Peter reasonably well at Princeton. We were both engineers and members of Cannon Club. I asked how he ended up in Denmark. After an exchange of notes I mentioned that we were to be in Copenhagen on July 15. Would he and his wife Kirsten be available for lunch? Indeed said Peter and we ended up with much more than a very pleasant lunch at the wonderful museum of modern art, Louisiana. As we looked out on the Baltic I caught up with 50 years of history. After finishing his MBA at Harvard, Peter came first to Denmark on a Fullbright. He liked what he saw and began doing consulting there and in Sweden. He returned to the U.S. and completed a PhD at Case Western. He returned to Denmark and, after some time with IBM and a 10 year stint as president of an international consulting firm specializing in operations research, began a long association with Danish academia; his last professorship, since 1985, was at The Copenhagen Business School. During my brief time as an electrical engineer, Peter was one of the guys next to me who always seemed so much smarter. In Art 309 I felt better about myself. I could understand pictures if not differential equations.
 
Although Peter's career was largely involved in teaching operations research, economics and management, he now has a new and important interest. After leaving Nan and me at our ship Peter and Kirsten were proceeding to clean out Peter's office at the Business School. He has an emeritus relationship with the school but now spends a lot of time in India where he teaches business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and values-based leadership – all con amore. I believe Peter said he had already spent several months there earlier in 2005. Kirsten comes along and often indulges her interest and talent in writing. She was an editor at one of Denmark’s major newspapers and for many years before that as journalist, covered the developing countries, traveling extensively. They are presently working together, along with an American couple, on two books: Human Values at Work and Spiritual-based Leadership. In connection with this last book, on a recent trip she and Peter had an interview with India's President, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, a Moslem, highly respected and loved by the population, who was himself an engineer (aeronautical).
 
We had a wonderful day touring the Danish countryside, which included a visit to Karen Blixen's ( aka Isac Dinnesen - Out of Africa etc.) home. We finished with a dash through town and tea at the very nice department store Illum’s Bolighus. We left nothing on the field. I knew Nan was spent when she declined a tour of the store's Royal Copenhagen collection much of which was on sale.
 
It is hard to believe you can connect with someone so quickly after fifty years. It is a credit to Princeton and the bonds which were formed in those important years. I encouraged Peter to return for his 50th and he did, with Kirsten. I hope to publish a paper from Peter soon on his new passion, values and spirituality in leadership. I don’t know whether India needs help in this matter but it certainly appears that we do. Bart Reitz

 
 
 
Jack Goodman is Doing It 

What does JACK GOODMAN like to do in his retirement?   He gets up at 4 so as to catch the pre-dawn morning light in some swamp, meadow or forest, and stays, alone, in utter quiet until evening light, after sundown.   The result: as few as one but on good days as many as two dozen extraordinary photos of birds in motion.  You may see some by clicking here.

 

Waiting for the right moment or right light takes patience.  “Then it’s all over in an instant.”  Jack took six weeks to befriend a mother loon in northern Ontario.  Jack also photographs landscapes and people, including his grandchildren’s friends and Vermont farmers where he lives now.  “It’s endlessly fascinating,” he says.

 

Jack’s been at this since his retirement a few years ago, made possible by the success of an educational publishing company which RANDY MOTLAND and he started, now run by Jack’s son Will (P’83).  It produces films and videos to supplement otherwise possibly dreary lesson plans, Jack said.  “We brought to life subjects like Wordsworth and Emily Dickinson, the civil war, the electoral college and why not to smoke pot.” 

 

The company’s film and video work provided Jack a technical segue into photography.   He’s fascinated with the new digital technology. “All of a sudden, we can get really excellent images, with a single reflex camera,” he said.  That assumes, of course, that the subject is in front of the camera and cooperates.  Digital also has allowed him to escape “sloshing around all those chemicals in the dark room.”

 

Besides a house in Middlebury VT, he and his wife, Barbie, whom he met in high school and married shortly after graduation, have a “small place” in Key Largo FL and a cottage in Temagami, Ontario. 

 

 

Great Blue Heron in flight

 

more...

 

Baby Screech Owls

 

Baby Screech Owls ( Katya and Hank Bowers say they have a mother Screech Owl in one of their dead palm trees.

 

Lang Stevenson was out to bag 700 species of birds in continental North America by his 70th birthday. He had 698 and was missing the two birds shown below:

 

 

 

Greater Sage Grouse #699

  

 

Kirtland's Warbler

 

Classmates in Northern Michigan should call Lang about the warbler. The Sierras host the Greater Sage Grouse. Lang's 70th was May 11 but I couldn't wait. So, I e-mailed Lang and asked if he had bagged the final two. This is how he replied,

 

"Not quite-yet.Tomorrow morning I'm flying to Detroit where I'll meet a friend, rent a car and drive to Greyling, MI where we will commence our search for #700. My friend Bill Kreuger is at 699 also. We purposely held back a week because the Kirtland's is what is known as a late migrant wintering and rarely ever seen on remote uninhabited islands in the Bahamas. Thus I did not want to get to Michigan ahead of the birds. Tuesday or Wednesday will be the critical days.Wish us luck." Lang
 
After getting this note I suggested to Lang that he consider the Ivory Billed Woodpecker as # 700 if the warbler failed to show. He replied:
 
"That is an adventure I'd like to undertake someday.I've made an inquiry and surely will make many more. So far there is no established protocol for trying to find an Ivory-bill. The area in which the bird has been seen is a 500,000 acre swamp and none of the folks who have been fortunate enough to see the bird are showing where they saw it.I am told that if a nest hole or a roost is found, that location will be placed "off limits" for obvious reasons. It remains possible that a population of these mythic birds exists in the swamp but so far only one person has reported sighting a female and at that only once.Kirtland's Warbler is sexy enough for me at the moment. We can await more news on the Lord God Bird and thank the stars above that it's alive."  Best, Lang
 
May 21, 2005
 
Made it on May 17th at 09:30 about 12 miles east of Grayling, Michigan. Kirtland's Warbler is a jewel. Still highly endangered with about 2600 individuals living only in the Jack Pine woods of north central Michigan. Lang

 

 

 

Bart and Mary Strang at home on their ranch illustrating the story that is out in the PAW this month.The annual sale (their only) on October 28th was very successful.  

 The bull SH Diamond 881.

 


Bart is currently recovering from a 12 hour spinal surgery on October 4th, in Vail, CO.  We finally found a spinal specialist at the Steadman Hawkins Clinic who could explain what was going on and knew how to correct the problem.  He had to straighten Bart 40 degrees.  He was hospitalized for close to two weeks before being transferred to a rehab in Carbondale, CO.  

Last January he survived a major pulmonary embolism and came back from it wonderfully.  However, his back pain has been eating him up and he was going down hill.  We were reluctant to have him endure another major surgery as he's had 23 orthopedic ones since 1959, but, fortunately for us, Lu Strayer and his wife visited us in July '04.  Lu, as you may know, is a retired spinal surgeon.  He's been an incredible help and felt that the surgery was the only answer for Bart.   It's his only chance to walk again and have some quality of life. His recovery will be long and slow as he had no reserves going into the surgery and he basically has to learn how to walk again.  But, as you know, he 's resilient and has the will to recover.    

The following poems are from Dave Sofield's book Light Disguise, published by Cooper Beech Press in Providence RI ($14). Dave's poems have been published as well by the New Yorker, Poetry, The New Criterion and the Yale Review. He teaches English at Amherst.

 

INSOMNIA


More often, now, of course. The different dark,
an amber urban light thickened by snow.
The air's too cold for talk, and so an hour
of drifting thought, uneasy, humorless.
Mechanically, one does in time begin
to hear what's there: someone coughs twice, a dog
replies, over the caustic two-tone cry,
on and on, of the French police. And then,
a pause. By four the quarter seems at rest.

And yet, out of the quiet comes a last
low sound, the ordinary, tired whine,
sporadically, of cars along the quay.
Next door, a door is shut, and in the vague
hollow of semi-sleep one hears again
the traffic as in soft anabasis
it empties out the boulevard, the square,
draining the night, until one knows, below
the night, a dark within the absent dark.

DEATHS DUELL


        Frost Library, Amherst College
        for Judith Raskin (1928-1984) and Lisa Raskin

        Wee have a winding sheete in our Mothers wombe,
        which growes with us from conception, and wee come
        into this world, wound up in that winding sheet, for
        we come to seeke a grave.
                   John Donne, February 25, 1631

Sick to death of nothing more than heat
(the suns midsummer song but word on word),
I've walked through Frost's gray light to find, interred
three levels down and drawn in his winding sheet,
the image Donne had as his last conceit
commanded days before his death. Blurred,
then clear, a line comes back to him, unheard
for thirty years, a phrase he'll now repeat
until it's wound around him once again:
Whoever comes to shroud me . .. Whoever comes
into these stacks, I think, might double back
in disbelief: amid deliriums
of dust and noise—pneumatic drills attack
a decomposing wall—a dozen men

are covering the books with tarp. To retrieve
a book during construction, push apart
the plastic where it overlaps. I start,
only to find not books but you, who grieve
beside an 02 tent, the make-believe—
she'd been Pamina at the Met—of art,
or life, yielding your mother's ravaged heart
to night's great queen. Your tears are recitative
to her failing breath. Drug-dulled, scarcely aware,
she's humming Ach, ichfuhl's, but feeling not
the pain of love, just pain.You raise your arm
to mimic-play a flute's brief counterplot.
Whoever comes to shroud me do not harme
             Nor question much
That subtile wreath of haire ...

 

Nicholas Beauchamp speaks from Contention Des Beauchamps Click

Turhan Tirana visits Dave Cameron's Montana! click. 

Tom Dailey in Uganda: why did he go? What happened? Read on! click


Tom Dailey and friends

Stu Pertz in the Bahamas- click

The hotels are getting bigger and the cruise ships enormous, but some things stay the same. 

We moved to Paradise and experienced an Inferno!   Hal Bahls describes his involvement in the 2003 fires around San Diego - Fire Story

Bob Duncan's reflections on the "Challenge of Ethnic Identity" - read it here
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